Thawing
by legendoflaura
Summary: The Winter Soldier finds himself free from the grid of S.H.I.E.L.D and Hydra. He begins a journey into discovering his past and he isn't doing it alone. Takes place after the events of Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier.
1. Chapter 1

Hydra didn't have a hold on him and as they scoured the underbelly of D.C., their power frayed without a central leader after Alexander Pierce's death, they could not find the man once known as Bucky Barnes. But he hadn't gone far and he also didn't have a name. After dragging the body of that strange but familiar man onto the shore, he bolted.

He swiped the wallet off a dead S.H.I.E.L.D agent, who was dark-haired and similar built. The man's name was Dimitri Visconti, irrelevant now that he was dead, but useful to use for the time being. There were a couple of bills, and a few credit cards that could be used for a few days before it would be caught on by the credit companies that the real Visconti was dead. And dead men can't buy now and pay later.

The man without a name lingered for a moment when he held up a picture of the man's family. In the picture, Visconti held in his arms a newborn child, and a toddler, maybe two or three, peered over. The man without a name, the man called The Winter Soldier crumbled it in his metallic palm and threw it on top of the limp body the memory once belonged to. For the first time in the fifty years, the whole life that he knew, he was not under directive from Hydra. The Soldier was not fed the hype of warfare and destruction. He was not poked and prodded to kill. He was not strapped to the chair and partially lobotomized every time something from the past showed up in his present. And now with his thoughts as the only ones controlling him and the fresh face of that stranger called Captain America, he began to sense something was amiss in his storyline.

The Soldier retreated to a Hydra safe house not far from where he dragged the Captain out of the water. Two low-level guards were waiting inside, and before they could alert someone in the upper tiers the Soldier laid them hard into the cement floor. Their fingers still wrapped around the triggers they never had the chance to pull. He knew with all the chaos boiling over outside that no one else would be here. His intuition was wrong.

First, he tasked himself with finding a cover. He was too noticeable in his shiny metal arm to get out of D.C. This was his only chance to fall off Hydra's map, the first time it ever crossed his mind that he had free-will. And freedom was something he was sure he would fight for. The guard's clothes wouldn't be a good uniform as they were S.H.I.E.L.D uniforms. He checked in the bathroom for anything remotely useful, but instead got trapped inside looking at the man in the mirror. His cuts and bruises slowly were healing. Whatever Zola had done all those years ago had boosted his immune system to overdrive. It was some sort of steroidal concoction for the white blood cells. He had lived for more than fifty years, but had barely aged more than five.

One of his first memories after waking up for the first time was Hydra forcing him to read. He read about war and the greatest warriors of all time. He read about myth and beliefs and obedience. He read about Athena popping out of Zeus' head just from being a thought.

"You're our Athena," they said to him.

He was clad in body armor in weaponry from day one. He wiped off the dried blood and soot from his face with a nearby towel he dampened.

In a second, he snapped his head away from the mirror to look out into the hallway where he heard the faintest echo. He slowly moved his body, a master of stealth. His first metal arm was not the top-notch technology he had attached to his body today, and it often made noises that gave out his position in early missions so he had learned to adapt to move with complete discreetness, unlike whoever had made the noise in the safe house.

The Soldier took several steps outside the bathroom when his eyes locked on to the figure. It was too small to be the Captain.

"Winter Soldier," she said.

The figure stepped close to him, slowly, her arms rose with her palms parallel to her chest. She wore a black outfit. The clenched fists he has loosened. Her voice was soft and she didn't appear as a threat. He was not used to conversations. His directive had always been to shoot and don't ask questions.

"I've seen you before," she continued.

He could make out that she wasn't the redhead who had nearly choked him earlier between her thighs, the Russian spy that he once shot to take out the engineer using her as a body shield. The Soldier exhaled with a sound. She was trying his patience.

"I saw you at the Hydra facility in Italy fifty years ago. You were different then, you had a different name. Do you remember who the man with that name was?" she asked.

The Winter Soldier remained silent. She came closer, on a second analysis of her character she was still not a threat. She stood almost face to face with him. She was tall and he didn't have to look too far down to look deep in her eyes. Her hair was brown and curly. Her skin was pale. She had a scar above her left eye. She lowered her hands slowly to her sides. The woman looked as young as he did, how could she be around fifty years ago.

"Do you want to learn who you are?" she asked.

Without realizing, he nodded, his chin just barely moving up and down. But it did.

"My name is Arianna Rossi. I lived in Azzano, Italy during World War II. When Hydra came in 1942, the men did not bother us at first. We thought we would have some protection. I was 17 years old. I had lost my fiancé and two brothers in the war. I thought I had seen the last of destruction in my family. The soldiers came and took me and the other young women in our town as prisoners. When I tried to escape, the soldiers sliced my face, and Dr. Arnim Zola saw that I was strong. He strapped me down and injected me with the same serum he used on you. And I've been living this life under the pandering of Hydra since then. How much can you tell me of your life?" The woman said.

The Soldier looked at her with curiosity. Inside his mind was bursting with flashing lights and white noise. All he could think about when he tried to look beyond his day one was lightening.

"I know nothing," he responded.

"Good, I'll give you a start." Arianna said.

She instructed him that she would be back in a half hour and he was to remain at the house. It took some clever convincing for him to trust that she would not be alerting anyone he was there. When she came back, promptly a half hour and a minute later she held a few shopping bags. "Change into a pair and get ready to leave here," she instructed.

Denim jeans, a plain white t-shirt, and a hoodie. He had never worn anything but camouflage and body armor. These clothes felt constricting. Arianna waited for him outside the bathroom, and when he came out she asked if she could touch his hair.

She pushed it back with some water and held it in place with a baseball cap. In the time he had spent changing in the bathroom she had also changed. She wore a t-shirt and jeans, and sneakers. She wore a hat too, to cover the scar above her eye. He started to leave for the door. Expecting they were now set to go.

"Hey, no, you can't go out yet, not with your hand exposed," she said. "It's silly, I know, you might not get this, but here," she pulled from a bag a single large brown glove. He scowled at her.

"It's a baseball glove. I think it's the only thing I could find that would fit over your hand in the stores. I have a baseball bat too. It shows we are going to a park to play baseball," she explained as she helped shimmy the glove over his left hand.

The glove was stiff from being brand new and it smelled like leather. She handed him the baseball bat and she herself held a baseball. When she gathered up the clothes he had changed out of, they loaded up a black SUV outside the compound and took off. The Soldier had spent the past 50 years sitting in rooms, studying targets and assassination plans. He spent his time hunting and stalking. Sometimes pawing at his mark to draw them into a corner. And if things didn't go as planned he had back-ups of back-ups. But he never let a target slip away. Hydra kept him locked up, pumping his head with carnage. And here he was now, taking orders from a strange woman.

She drove twenty miles outside of D.C. before stopping at the side of the road.

"Do you have any electronic devices given to you by S.H.I.E.L.D or Hydra?" her hands still gripped the wheel.

He thought for a moment, all he had left was a single blade and his arm. He knew the blade was clean, in Hydra weapons came and went. But his arm he was unsure about. He knew it wasn't just designed as a single powerful weapon. She watched him place his flesh hand on top of his other arm. The way his fingers grasped the sweatshirt cloth showed it was a foreign feeling. He was accustomed to the cold touch of the metal. Adrianna reached into her own pocket and pulled out a cell phone. From her bag she pulled out a small communicator used by Hydra sleeper cells.

"You have these?" she asked. Oh, right, the communicator. The Soldier pulled up the sleeve of the sweatshirt to reveal his metal arm. He turned it over and snapped out a single scale. Underneath the scale was the same communicator she had.

"Throw it out the window. They will know we are together, but it will throw them off our scent for at least a little while," she said as she lowered the windows.

After they discarded the devices they could be tracked with, she turned around, covered the tracks, and drove in a different direction. The car was silent for most of the ride. "Tell me, where you are taking me," the Soldier spoke, not as a question but as a demand.

"An organic farm," she responded.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Sunset encapsulated the sky as Steve Rogers regained consciousness. He felt damp and sore, and his right eye was swollen to a size that his sight was temporarily suspended. The air reeked of smoke and the ringing in his ears was due to his broken communication device. Sirens wailed from across the river.

But with all that background noise it was the sound of crunching foliage that woke him.

He wasn't sure that he could get up. The Soviet-style bullets Bucky had shot went clean through his body. He was running on pure adrenaline when he lifted the beam off him. His fists pummeled his face, but he couldn't finish his mission. The real Bucky was trapped in there. Bucky was two-sides of a coin, a killer and a child.

It was the sound of Natasha's voice that kept Rogers from putting up defenses again.

"Hey Cap," she said, calmly.

Rogers listened to her.

"I can't drag you all the way to the hospital so Fury is going to scoop you up in the copter, you can go back to sleep, you don't have to do anything," she added.

He could imagine her hovering over him, a hand placed on her hip or her arms tucked on her chest. She'd have a half-smile on her face, signs of a person who didn't linger on tragedy.

Then he felt pressure on his body, Natasha was attaching a harness to hoist him into the air. He fell back asleep to the whispering blades of a S.H.I.E.L.D stealth helicopter.

After a several day stint in the hospital recuperating from the gun shot wounds and having Sam go through an in-depth analysis of every song on Marvin Gaye's 'Trouble Man,' Steve was back on his feet. His body never took this long to recover before, but he had also never been shot with straight-through Russian bullets.

When Sam wasn't around and Steve was solely surrounded by the beeps of monitors and squeaky shoes running down the hallway, he would often think about the few encounters he had with his back-from-the-dead best friend.

_"Who the hell is Bucky?"_

His retort hurt more than the gunshot wound to his abdomen did. Bucky's body wreaked havoc like a madman, but the look in his eyes conveyed to Steve the man he knew was buried somewhere deep inside. His Bucky, the one who protected him from schoolyard bullies, was in that madman. And it was going to be the only mission he was going to do.

When Sam, Steve, Natasha, and Fury met by Fury's gravesite, and they all realized they were going separate ways, Steve saw this as his chance to reclaim a part of his life he had deserved all along.


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you all for reading so far! - Laura

Arianna pulled down a dirt road nearly covered in overgrown brush. It was bumpy and the low-hanging branches scratched and rattled against the sides of the SUV. A few minutes down the road, it opened to a large expanse, and a beautiful white house with pastel blue trimmings sat atop a hill overlooking acres of vegetable and fruit gardens. To the right of the house was a stable and corral, and beyond that lied a pasture with grazing cattle standing in front of the sunset.

The Soldier stared out his window; he never had any time to think about the simplicities of life. And this was as simple as life could get.

"Help me bring in the bags from the trunk, please," Arianna stated as she exited the vehicle. The trunk popped open on her command and she walked the direction of the front door. It was already open.

The Soldier had been watching her from the corner of his eye as he rounded to the rear of the car, when he saw her simply pull open the door he was shocked. An unlocked door usually meant trouble in the espionage business.

Before she could cross the threshold, the Solider rushed toward her and pushed her aside. He was silent and she began to protest.

"What the hell are you doing?" she snapped.

But he continued his reconnaissance on the house.

"For God's sake, knock that off, you're going to scare the workers. It's safe here," she said, gently putting her hand on the shoulder of his real arm. He flinched, not only from the touch but also because the bones were still broken. He had forgotten about the pain until now. His head whipped around to stare at her. His eyebrows pointed inwardly and his chest rose and deflated vigorously.

He shrugged her off and returned to the car, keeping his eyes on her until he passed her.

When the belongings were all brought in, Arianna forced him on a walk around the grounds explaining how she had came to own the farm. It was a completely off the grid establishment she inherited from an old man she befriended. She was confident S.H.I.E.L.D and Hydra didn't know about it, and if they did, it meant nothing without having technology.

As it passed to night, Arianna made dinner to which the Soldier only stared at.

"You're free to go if you please from here, but I want to help you get what you want," she stated.

"How do you know what I want?" he grunted, his eyes on the plate of food in front of him.

"You want to know why you know that man," she explained.

He picked up the fork with his metal arm. It was light, almost inexistent in his grip.

He picked up a meatball and examined it.

"Besides, in a few days the Smithsonian is going to re-open, and there's something you're going to want to see there," she added.

After being grilled about national security on Capitol Hill, Natasha hitched a ride with Fury to Europe and then traveled by herself to Kiev. She was going to the source of where she got the files on The Winter Soldier she gave to Rogers.

She landed under the veil of night to an abandoned reservoir outside the city limits. A sole figure was standing on a wall watching her.

"Hey Clint, get down here," Natasha called as she stepped out of the plane.

"Glad to see you're okay, Nat." he leaped down as he said it.

He ambled over to her and wrapped his arms around her. A gust of wind whipped her hair around the back of his neck.

When they pulled away, he looked down and smiled at her.

"Thanks for getting those files for Rogers for me," she mused.

"I'm glad that necklace survived," he responded.


	4. Chapter 4

(Sorry the formatting came out so weird on this chapter, I'm working on fixing it, Enjoy!)

Fury stood atop the stairs of the aircraft. The S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in Lucerne, Switzerland had survived the ambush from Hydra. The agents here were able to keep it on the S.H.I.E.L.D. side, thwarting Hydra sleeper cells in a very bloody dogfight. Fury gazed out at the building, half-collapsed, but still throbbing with power as agents from across the board convened. Every agent was on high-alert, paranoia had swept through the conscious of every member. Best friends and partners had been turned against each other. Every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent walked around with a visible guard, their shoulders uptight, and a hand placed cautiously over their weapon.

Fury had been in contact with an engineer at the Lucerne base who succumbed to her wounds hours before Fury arrived. She assured him it was safe here and a group of agents wanted to put together a task force to go after Hydra strongholds. Fury wasn't going to trust anyone off the bat, but if his objective was to take down Hydra, he couldn't be a one man team to do it.

As Fury descended the steps, he was greeted by Maria Hill, who had only just arrived after spending a few days in New York being screened and tested by Tony Stark. Fury had no doubts that she would pass.

"Good to see you, Sir," Hill commented.

"Likewise, Hill. Stark gave you the run around? We could sure use him at a time like this," Fury replied as he and Hill walked towards the remains of the building.

"I do technically work for him so I wouldn't be surprised if we did," she remarked.

"We got a lot of work to do Hill, and we need to know who we got on our side."

Steve packed a single duffel bag. He visited Peggy in the hospital one last time, but felt like it may be the last time he would see her. Her mind was deteriorating at an alarming rate. He left a note for Sharon, thanking her for her help and he would need to make a rain date on their cup of coffee. He was hoping it wouldn't turn out the way he promised Peggy to go dancing all those years ago.

Sam picked Steve up in his truck and they traveled north to New York. It was imperative to Steve to tell Tony what Zola had said in the bunker. However, it would put Bucky on Stark's hit list. If it was true, what Zola had said, Bucky was responsible for the elder Stark's death. He was responsible for a lot of people's deaths.

As the passenger this time, Steve spent most of his time looking out the window. People didn't feel alive out there, they were frightened. They had the right to fear but fear was what would control them. Fear is what gave Hydra the power to snake its' way up the ranks. It was fuel, and even though he didn't want to admit it, he knew everyone was going to have to suffer quite a bit for their freedom, because he didn't know if he could protect them anymore.

Upon the first sights of the battered New York skyline, a peculiar thought scratched the surface of Captain America's mind. He wondered, for a moment, if Tony knew about Hydra. Hadn't Tony downloaded a mass of files on the Helicarrier to find out about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s plans to build Tesseract-powered weapons? Wouldn't somewhere, in all those 1's and 0's be the combination for 'Heil Hydra?'

He passed it off. It was enough that every S.H.I.E.L.D. file was exposed. Steve hadn't given a glance to any of them. He was afraid of finding out more things he didn't want to hear.

Sam and Steve were dropping by the Stark Tower unannounced. Tony had already renovated the building except for the broken sign at the top. It was still just a giant 'A' hanging in the air.

They parked in a garage (which Steve found ludicrously expensive) and made their way over to the tower. People on the street tossed concerned looks his way. Instead of smiling or waving at him like they used to, they hushed and made a break to stay clean out of his area. They were afraid that destruction would soon follow. And the last time he was in New York, it did.

The security in Tony's tower was top-notch, but on the site of seeing Rogers a secretary jumped out of her chair and quickly ran over to escort Steve.

"You don't have to go through clearance levels, Mr. Stark has been expecting you," the secretary said as she ushered them past security guards and into an elevator.

"The top floor," she added, as the two men walked into the elevator.

Steve was briefly tense recalling his ambush in the escalator at the Triskelion. Interestingly, Stark's elevator played music. It was, of course, AC/DC, as he was fond of their songs to make grand entrances with.

The elevator took mere seconds to reach the penthouse. The doors opened and Tony was at the bar with three empty glasses in front of him.

Steve and Sam exited the lift, Steve had been here before, but so much of it had changed after being damaged in the Battle of New York. Sam looked around with a smile on his face and nodding. He really liked Stark's style.

"I feng shui-ed it out," Tony piped up. He poured malted liquor into the glasses and brought them over to where Steve and Sam had stopped.

"Cap …and you must be the Falcon. I liked you, and then I saw what happened to the suit I made. Not cool man," Tony handed the glasses off. Steve waved it to the side; it made no sense to drink. It would take a whole barrel of wine before he would feel any effect.

It was odd to see Tony without the glowing blue life-support system he had implanted in his chest. Now Tony really was just a billionaire, playboy-philanthropist, and nothing more. No one ever expected Tony to give up being Iron Man.

"How's Pepper?" Steve said, noting her absence.

"Away," Tony replied, setting the glass down on an end table.

"So, what brings you to my great big ugly tower in the sky," Tony clearly had some leftover irritation over that comment Steve made the last time.

"I have some bad news for you," Steve said.

"Oh, what? You don't think I already heard S.H.I.E.L.D. is Hydra, Hydra is S.H.I.E.L.D. If that is the bad news I think you need to remember in this century we get news alerts to our phones, Cap," Tony was always one to tease about the generation gap.

"The secretary said you were expecting us, Stark. So maybe you should tell us what you know about that," Steve's voice was flecked with impatience. This wasn't a time for jokes.

"I have a present for you, big man," Tony patted Sam on the back and beckoned him to walk in stride with him.

Steve turned around on his heels to see where he was going.

"How can we trust you Stark?" he called after. But Tony was instructing Jarvis to activate something or other…

True to Tony's pompous nature, a wall paneling dislodged and disappeared revealing a metal trimmed room behind it. There were glasses displays. Intrigue washed over Steve, and he followed the pair down into the vault.

"My man, you flew really well with the Falcon, but I've had lots of spare time now that I don't suit up anymore, so, as you can see, lots of new Falcon's over here. Just grant me one wish, if you meet Clint, shove it in his face? That man wishes he could lay an egg so bad," Tony walked Sam over to one Falcon suit in particular.

Steve could see Sam's face in the reflection. It was like watching a kid's face at a zoo. Sam was beginning to feel a little useless to Steve's cause without having wings.

"You serious, 'cause The Winter Soldier did rip off my wings on the other suit," Sam cracked.

Tony stepped away from Sam to let him ogle some more.

"Speaking of the bionic arm guy who could learn a few tricks about make-up application from those girls that work at Sephora, you don't happen to know where he went, do you, Cap?" Tony walked right up to Steve.

It was peculiar to see Tony without the glowing blue ring in his chest that had kept him alive. Steve wondered if he was a man with or without a heart now.

"That's why I came to see you, I know who he is and what he's done," Steve said.

"If you're looking for help on bringing him down, I closed up shop, no more suiting up for me, El Capitan. The Avengers thing won't work anymore," Tony had lifted his hands up to his shoulders.

"He doesn't need to be 'brought down,' Stark. He needs to be… reset, he was my best friend," Steve cringed on using the past-tense.

"Well you have a bad selection of friends and I am not needed for this," Tony responded, he turned around to rejoin Sam.

"He killed your parents…," Steve said.

"That accident they were in on Long Island…" Steve continued, but Tony interjected before he could finish.

But Tony Stark knew all about the death of his parents that led him to inherit the Fortune 500 Company at age 21.

"Was an accident," Tony finished the sentence for Steve.

"No it wasn't, Tony," Tony was stopped midway between him and Sam. The hum of electronics dominated the air for a moment.

His gaze locked on the tips of his feet momentarily.

"What do you know of their deaths, you were incubating then," he remarked.

"Dr. Arnim Zola, have you heard of him? He told me that your father put the pieces together before any of us, he knew S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised. He was going to expose it, but Hydra used The Winter Soldier to make it look like an accident," Steve explained.

Sam had finished salivating over the new Falcon suit to show interest at the intense conversation building up between Rogers and Stark.

Tony stood frozen midway between the two men.

"Dr. Zola died in the 70's. How could he have told you anything that wasn't 50 years ago?" he quietly asked.

"Natasha and I traced the encryption signal to a computer system where his apparent self was put on it. And that's what he told us. He told us he came up with the algorithm for Project Insight. He told us that under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s nose they were the catalysts for almost all the catastrophic events in the past 50 years. And if someone were to get in the way they would find a way to knock them off," Steve explained.

"And what do you want me to do about this now?" Tony replied. He turned to face him again.

"At least, help me find a way to reset Bu- The Winter Soldier," Steve pleaded.

"Why 'reset'? What is this 'resetting,' we should just kill the guy if he's responsible for all of this," Tony stated.

"We can't do that."

"And why not?"

"Because my best friend is inside there, somewhere, and he's not the killer; his body is just the canvas Hydra has been using to carry out their dirty work."

"Well, hate to break it to you but your 'best friend' has a lot of blood on his hands, and I see no reason why he should live while everyone he's ever killed remains dead," Tony's voice was harsh.

Steve could see he wasn't going to win this one. He had just stirred a very bitter nerve in Tony. He was so much like his father at times.

"We've all got a lot of blood on our hands, and some people can turn it around to make a difference," Same spoke up from his corner.

"Jarvis, pack up the suit for Sam and have them escorted out," Tony exited the vault without even looking at either of them. Arianna began to notice the increasing agitation in the Soldier. She was lucky to never being on the receiving end of his temper tantrums but was getting concerned that if he didn't get frozen soon he would go on an all-out rampage. And she needed his help for a little while still.

The next few days there was a lot of furniture being tossed from windows, knives being thrown into walls, and he even took out half of the basement steps. She likened his behavior to a toddler's, and gave him the space he needed to vent. Arianna believed his mental state would grow worse as his mind tries to kick-start memories that weren't meant to be brought up. That was the thing about how Hydra trained him. Every time the past would come back up he was trained to refuse it, and fuel his temper. Now he seemed simply confused about all these memories that he knew should be in his head but weren't.

A few mornings after the failure for Hydra to launch Insight, D.C. had calmed down to a point where workplaces were re-opening and daily life was commencing. And the Smithsonian museums were open for business.

Arianna and the Soldier entered the museum together. She was nervous he could fly off the handle because this was the biggest piece of his past's puzzle he was going to learn. The museum was full of parents toting their children by their side; Arianna's guess is they wanted to show their kids that even with all the destruction it was okay to keep on living.

The Soldier had used the I.D. from the dead S.H.I.E.L.D. agent he had swiped it off of. It worked and he was amused at how flawed a government-owned building securities' system was. No wonder it was easy for Hydra to go unnoticed all these years.

Arianna led him up an escalator to the Captain America and The Howling Commandos exhibit. Pictures of the man on the bridge were plastered on every surface. He looked at the projections of the face with confusion. He didn't feel physical pain but he was feeling something. Arianna stopped when she caught sight of the display about James Buchanan Barnes. The Soldier hadn't placed his eyes on it due to scanning every other display. Arianna stayed back to watch him and let him have a moment with a real ghost.

When the Soldier got to the display, he was looking at his reflection without any mirror.

James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes

He tried to read the words but his eyes kept circling back to the large picture of his face. It was him but how could it be him. There the words sprung from the biography that he heard in Arianna's story. Azzano, Italy. Only the beginning of where one life met its end and another took its place.

She left him standing there for a few minutes to soak it in.

She cautiously walked up to him, coming to him from his side. He didn't even look at her. His eyes were fixated in front of him.

His face bore the expression of a child's upon learning the death of a pet or grandparent. There was so much misunderstanding as he looked at his own memorial.

"I died?" he stammered.

"Not really," she replied, softly.


	5. Chapter 5

Arianna stood on top of a hill. Something was very, very wrong. She had never seen the troops like this before. The Nazis had always been, in a sense, respectful to her hometown. They even helped repair a damaged aqueduct that supplied most of the water supply to the village. Now they were wearing completely black uniforms, and the soldiers were firing off their guns sporadically. They had killed perfectly good livestock.

She could hear her mother calling her from the distance between the hill and their farmhouse. The soldiers were coming closer but her feet were anchored. She began to panic when she never had a reason to fear them before.

"Arianna!" the sound of her mother's voice wafted from across the field. She snapped her head to look down at their house. There were soldiers inside her house. And now there was shouting and the echoes of rampaging.

She had no direction to run. There was no safety. The Grim Reaper stood at either direction if she chose to run into the woods or run back home. For a moment she thought about how pleasant it would be to choose your death. But it was stricken from her mind, her feet had unlocked, and she was sprinting towards her home.

There was a gunshot.

Arianna ducked down while sprinting. It caused her to lose her balance and she tumbled into the dirt, rolling all the way to the bottom of the hill. There were screams coming from inside the house. She turned to get up, to go inside and fight for her family, but a soldier appeared from around the corner and stepped on her wrist. She thought she had been shot.

"Pretty young girl," he said in a terrible Italian accent. Arianna wriggled beneath his boot. The weapon in his arms had a strange blue glow. He was waving over another soldier. She was suddenly a mouse trapped in a corner by two very hungry cats. Both of the men looked down at her. They had masks and goggles on but she could tell they were laughing by the crinkles at the edges of their faces. They spoke in German, nodded at each other, and then the second soldier lifted his weapon and pounded the butt of his gun into her face. Lights out.

It was the only memory that truly scared Arianna.

When she looked at the Soldier, Bucky, she saw herself trapped under the boot again. Suddenly she was overcome with the feeling to hug him. Her body swayed and in that hesitation she decided it would be a very bad idea to do such a thing.

It was a few more moments before he took his eyes off the memorial.

"I am that man," his voice, low, sullen, behind his eyes it looked like his mind was frantically trying to put together a polka-dot themed jigsaw puzzle.

"You are James Buchanan Barnes… Bucky, that was a nickname that you used," Arianna said.

She went to put her hand on his shoulder, but paused mid-air. Bad idea, she thought. She turned her palm into a fist and let it fall haphazardly to her side.

From the very beginning the Soviets had called him The Winter Soldier. He had never had a real name. The Soldier turned away from the exhibit and started for the exit.

Arianna watched as he clenched his fist tight, she quickly rejoined his side and shuffled him as fast as she could through the crowd, fearing he was going to have a mental breakdown at any moment. She controlled his direction by placing one gently on his back, and the other on his fist, now shaking.

The splash of sunlight on his face seemed to calm him down just enough to get to the car. She had packed it before they left for the museum this morning. They weren't going back to the farm; they set a new course of direction, straight to New York.

* * *

Natasha stood in front of a television screen, staring at her own face. The Ukrainian news channel was showing footage from the Capitol Hill hearing. She found it amusing that no one could tell she was lying under oath right then and there when they asked her if she knew where Steve was. She did know. She could be put in prison just for that.

Clint shut the television off just as the news station shifted into a segment about her past.

"Well, fuck, Nat, guess we can't stay here too long," he laughed.

Natasha smirked and made her way over to the table in the center of the room.

"How can we trust this informant?" she asked, looking over the notes, some of it belonged to what they were working on and some were a copy of the files Natasha had given Steve about Bucky.

"Well, they came to me with the information about The Winter Soldier, right as the Captain was taking down Project Insight. If they were working for Hydra they wouldn't have done that," Clint said, following her. He put his palms on the edge of the table. He stood next to her looking at all the dead ends he had run into.

"But the files were already in D.C., whoever it was just told you where to tell me to get them, and jeez that nearly got me killed, Clint," she reprimanded him.

"Anything we do can almost get us killed," Clint leveled.

"They knew you were here, the only other person besides me to know that is Fury, and I don't think it was him because he was a bit pre-occupied saving our asses back there."

"Well, let's hope whoever sent it isn't sending a welcoming party for you."**  
**


	6. Chapter 6

Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.

For Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, the failure for Hydra to launch Project Insight was a minor setback. While the eradication of several million people that may cause problems down the line didn't occur, it did shift the world's focus on the corruption of their once beloved S.H.I.E.L.D. agency. And while Hydra may have been exposed, nothing garners more hate than betrayal. S.H.I.E.L.D. was public enemy number one.

Alexander Pierce failed on a big level. Strucker had put Pierce in charge of a major Hydra branch on the United States' eastern seaboard. And what did he do with the big opportunity? He oversaw it crash into the Potomac River. For Strucker, when the weak were plucked off, in this case Pierce's death, it only leaves the strongest to survive. Natural selection was the key to Hydra's survival.

Strucker spent a lot of time standing in examining the twins. Pietro Maximoff showed a rising amount of aggression the longer he was separated from his twin sister, Wanda. Wanda appeared trance-like, complacent most of the time solving complex puzzles with her gifts, but every so often she would throw a tantrum so powerful dust would be shaken from the rafters and cracks in the walls.

The Maximoff twins fascinated Strucker and all who got to work with them. When the Soviets picked up the near-dead American soldier they knew what they were going to do to him. However, in the case of the Maximoff's, this was completely uncharted territory. He was unsure of how malleable they were. They were unique; their DNA was something Hydra's scientists had never seen before. In a way, the anomalies in their genetic code made sense stemming from the knowledge they had spent most of their lives by the Chernobyl disaster site. And, as the Chernobyl disaster maimed almost everyone that interacted it, vast amounts of people succumbed to cancer and other deformities. The Maximoff's were the first known case to benefit from it.

Project Insight was just one head; the Maximoff's were two more.

* * *

Fury sat in an office chair facing the single floor-to-ceiling window. Mount Pilatus took up most of the view.

Hill had been especially useful in a time like this. Stark had supplied her with a secure line of contact since S.H.I.E.L.D.'s communications and databases were all down. Fury learned S.H.I.E.L.D. was now a terrorist organization and the United Nations was preparing to tear down whatever was left. This time Fury didn't have any cards in his hands.

And that's when it came to him. The cards were in a locker, not his suit.

He was going to need Coulson.


	7. Chapter 7

Hi there, Happy Easter! Sorry this took a few days, I had most of it done on Friday but got caught up in holiday planning. Also, I finally picked up Ed Brubaker's Captain America comics [i got the ultimate collection] and i am floored by how amazing it is. The Russo's cite this as their biggest influence for TWS movie, and Brubaker was even a writer on it [he also had a cameo has a scientist i believe] Pick it up at your local comic shop if you can. I'm definitely going to be pulling a few elements from that storyline, really fantastic. Thanks for reading! -Laura

* * *

He spent most of his time gazing into the distance, with an ever present ghost haunted his face. He was trying to conjure up the memories of his original life while watching the landscape dash by.

Every time they stopped to get gas or stretch their legs on the ride up to New York he would stand as close to the edge of the street. Arianna watched him, preparing herself to swoop in and dissuade him from doing something irrational. She had watched him from afar fight Captain America and she knew he was capable of almost anything. She's sacrifice herself for it.

For Hydra, Arianna was nothing more than a guinea pig. She was an expendable part of their research for the copy-cat serum of Dr. Erksine's successful one. They pushed her off buildings, dragged her from moving cars, and subjected her to some of the world's worst incurable viruses. They had done all of this in the year before they injected Bucky with it. They were ready to create their own super soldier but they lacked one key element. The advanced brain-washing techniques developed by the Soviets.

Hydra never brain-washed Arianna. They never saw a point to it, she was stronger than all of them, but controlled and manipulated as a prisoner.

When Hydra had learned their little experimentation had been picked up by the Soviets, they needed to find a way to get him back. The Soviets were responsible for taking over his mind; Hydra had just taken over his body. And then Hydra did what they were really good at.

"I knew him," he would say every one in awhile, letting the words stumble off his tongue. His eyes, slivered, trying to glean why.

Arianna would continue watching the road. She bit her own tongue. But she really wanted to say something back to him.

_You knew me too._

* * *

Steve was less than thrilled about the confrontation with Tony. He left the Stark Tower with a bad feeling in his gut. Sam, on the other hand, seemed very complacent carrying out his new hardware. It was a nice gesture, especially since other than Sam's friendship, his mobility in the Falcon suit was at the helm of their tag-team success. It reminded Steve how nice it was to not have to go through something alone. Because there were so few incidents in Steve's life that people could relate to.

Steve and Sam were at a crossroads on where to go next. They were hunted men hunting another. With Sam at the wheel, Steve instructed him to cross the East River into his old hometown: Brooklyn.

Brooklyn was a different breed than when Steve grew up during the Depression. Some parts were full of culture and progression and other areas were beleaguered with drugs and crime. In essence it was his home, but he never truly felt like he belonged here once he came back to life. There were scratch marks on the walls of memories he didn't want to revisit. Most of them were from great times, but they left Steve depressed. A longing to turn back the time to simpler times. He had to remind himself the present day could be simple too, if only he let everything from the past go.

But he couldn't, not with Bucky being alive. Peggy was on her deathbed and Bucky was the only remains from a time he knew how to live in.

The eerie remnants of his past flickered through his head as Sam darted down one-ways and circled the old neighborhoods. Steve and Bucky used to play baseball in the middle of the streets with the other kids, now kids couldn't even cross them alone without being struck down by a car. After crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, Sam parked the car by the East River State Park.

Steve left the car to sit on a bench under a tree. Joggers passed by without a glance. He gazed at the skyline. Scaffolding lined the sides of skyscrapers all across the lower east side of Manhattan, but the Stark tower stood in the center, with its obnoxious 'A' lit up in blue.


	8. Chapter 8

Natasha and Clint left Kiev under nightfall. She was a wanted woman no matter where she would turn. One of the biggest secrets of the century had leaked out and she was surprised it took for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s information to be dumped online to be put together.

Natasha was born in 1984. THE KGB had collapsed in 1991. If you do the math properly, Natasha was only six years old when the KGB folded. While she had been recruited to the KGB as a child, there wasn't any red in her ledger when they collapsed. Her Black Widow moniker didn't come for a few years later.

And, while it was true that the KGB collapsed, it didn't entirely disappear into thin air. A vein of the secret government organization survived and Natasha continued learning her skills in this smaller, near-defunct faction. She was in her mid-teens when she began carrying out her lethal solo missions. She didn't care about the main objective of the loyal Soviets she was working for. But it was under Hydra's hand that had continued the KGB in secret. A secret she could have known all along if she had only started asking questions sooner.

And then Budapest happened.

Clint could have killed her. He was supposed to. The chaos in Budapest was alarming and in an instant Natasha had found herself unarmed and without a cover. Hawkeye stared her down about forty feet away and his arrow pointed straight at her chest. And if his skill was even half what she was told it was, it was a guaranteed kill shot. With nowhere to run, and nothing to fight with in a long-distance match-up, Natasha, for the first time ever in her espionage career, surrendered.

That's why they say they remember Budapest very differently. Natasha was on an assassination mission of a sole diplomat. S.H.I.E.L.D. had caught wind of her objective after she was spotted on camera using public transport. It was a different tactic her and her Soviets had cooked up, hoping it would gain her the easy in and out access. Stroll in on public transport, duck out to an alley, hop in car at a rendezvous point and make a clean getaway.

When S.H.I.E.L.D. intercepted her mission all hell broke loose. The square was leveled, innocent people were caught in the crosshairs. Natasha had been responsible for the death of children before, but never had she seen it so up close. Something in her didn't want to fight back after that.

Hawkeye arrested her. She couldn't look at him the whole time. He sat next to her in the van.

"I know you didn't mean to do that," was the first thing ever said to her.

"Do what?" she wanted to sound spiteful, even vengeful, but her voice was limp and quiet.

"Kill that kid."


	9. Chapter 9

Steve sat alone overlooking the Lower East Side skyline for some time. As joggers passed by into the late afternoon he couldn't take his mind off the day he lost Bucky. There was something else in the memory that wasn't there before.

For some reason or another, Steve could remember jumping after him and searching for hours in the snow covered chasm Bucky had disappeared into. The snowflakes were big and whipping around his body in the storm, making the visibility poor and the wind biting. But he continued searching and searching. If there had been blood on the snow it would have been covered by the time Steve finished his search.

Steve knew this didn't happen; he knew he didn't look for Bucky. There was no sense to even try because the storm was insufferable and he still had to finish securing the rest of the train.

But, why did it feel so real to him?

Steve shook the pseudo-flashback off. Perhaps he was just hallucinating from stress. He suddenly remembered the story the lady had said at Sam's meeting. Swerving in the road because she though a plastic bag was an IED. Maybe they were one in the same, hallucinating things that weren't really ever there.

Sam rejoined Steve later on with a few slices of pizza from Grimaldi's. Brooklyn always had the best pizza. He could never enjoy it pre-serum because of his allergies, but he was damn grateful now to.

"Something's don't change," Steve said to Sam.

Sam agreed, partially, he was too busy annihilating a slice of pizza to really focus on subject matter.

"And other things get erased completely."

Steve felt homesick for another place in time.

"We'll need an aircraft, I want to leave here tonight," Steve said.

Sam recessed from his pizza massacre, he arched his eyebrows.

"We can't just get that from thin air…," Sam replied, pausing mid-sentence to clear his throat.

"…unless we ask Stark," he continued.

Steve felt deflated; he did not want to ask a favor from Tony after their dispute. He nominated Sam for it since they seemed to hit it off quite nicely.

Sam did so promptly, without needing to be told a second time.

"Jet will be ready in twenty minutes at Kennedy," Sam said getting off the phone.

Sam and Steve hailed a cab and made it to the airport with not a minute to spare.

"What terminal?" the cab driver barked, as they passed the first terminal. Steve hadn't thought about that, he hadn't traveled out of an actual airport, just military bases and wherever S.H.I.E.L.D. felt like it.

"Tony Stark's," Sam said, hoping it would mean something. The cab driver gave a frustrated huff. "Now I have to turn around," he said.

Tony stood in front of one of his private jets with his arms crossed. A golf cart with Steve, Sam, and their luggage trekked over from a gate.

Steve looked at Sam when he saw Tony.

"Why didn't you tell me he was going to be here?" he said. Sam shrugged, he didn't know.

"Hello, boys, a little late I see?" Tony mused.

Steve and Sam hopped off the cart. Every cab driver knew where Tony's 'terminal' was. It was the one they never could go to.

"We're only five minutes late, how did you beat us here from Manhattan?" Steve asked.

"One of the many perks of being a billionaire, now come on, you've cost us valuable time, Cap," Tony started up the stairs of his plane. Sam and Steve followed trudging up the steps with their belongings, including the Falcon suit.

Once situated on the plane and in the air, Tony poured them drinks from the bar again. Steve sat by himself looking out a window at the few minutes of sunset he could get. The plane moved swiftly Long Island and was headed for the dark expanse of the Atlantic.

Tony hadn't said anything on why he was coming along too. He had no business in Russia as far as Steve knew. Sam, once again, commented on how cool it was to be on Tony Stark's plane. They were quickly bonding.

Sam continued on his tour of the jet alone while Tony sauntered over. He sat across from Steve, and Steve turned his attention from the now complete darkness outside to Tony.

"Why are you here?" Steve said.

"Someone has Pepper," Tony replied in a low voice.

Steve sat up in his seat. This piqued his interest, and a wave of sympathy flushed over him for Tony. Steve liked Pepper; she seemed to put Tony in his place.

"Who has her?" Steve questioned.

"She was at the Triskelion in Washington just before you decided to crash an Insight helicarrier into it. She was going back to my office in D.C. and told me she would call when she got there, she never did. I traced her phone and the signal cut out en route to Moscow, but that's all I've got so far," Tony said.

"So you think Hydra has her?" Steve asked.

Tony took a sip of his drink and leaned back into his chair.

"Next to S.H.I.E.L.D. I have the most powerful arsenal and wide-array of weapons available. Now that S.H.I.E.L.D. went bye-bye, I am numero uno. So if you were an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D. who would you blackmail to get the upper-hand?" Tony explained.

"I understand." Steve responded.

"Besides, you want your 'friend' back, I know, but you also want HYDRA taken down. You're too noble and patriotic to let that pass you by. Like Fury said, you find HYDRA, you'll find your friend," Tony continued.

"Fury never said that to me. How do you know what he said at all?" Steve snarled.

"I know that, jeesh. Hill is working for me now; I have her with Fury to keep our connections open. We all have different reasons to take down HYDRA, so we might as well share the burden in the manhunt," Tony peered out the window. He always looked like a man with a million different thoughts running through his head. He could have been developing a new weapon at this very moment.

"It sounds a lot like you want the Avengers to come back together," Steve said.

"Avengers?" Sam had now entered the conversation, done with his little tour of the aircraft.

"I assure you, Cap, I would be the last person to make that call…" Tony laughed.

"Besides it's not like I can conjure up enough lightening to get the Asgardian god down here, and Banner is having too much fun in the Arctic letting off some steam," he finished.

"How do you know where Banner is?" Sam's voice tinged with excitement. To an ordinary person, the whole group of the Avengers was fascinating.

"Because Sam, I hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D. once to find out what weapons they were building. And it makes so much sense now that the person who gave Fury the idea for those Tesseract-based weapons was none other than Alexander Pierce. So Sam, Banner is letting off those weapons in the Arctic so Hydra doesn't get their hands on them. He took off immediately after D.C. Banner is destroying them." Tony explained.

"I thought they were destroyed," Steve said.

"And once again you've been fooled, my friend. We have two hours before we near the Russian border, I think it's time to catch you up on a few things you should know," Tony said.

For just a moment, Steve thought again about searching for Bucky on that snowy day.


	10. Chapter 10

He began to question why he was following Arianna around, taking orders from her. He understood they were cut from the same cloth, but that didn't mean he had any allegiance to her. And then he thought about what he would do, if he was alone, and nothing could come to his mind. When they passed by New York City, the Soldier, Bucky, whoever he was looked at the city with fascination. He felt like he had woken up to this city every morning.

Silly thought, the Soviets and Hydra never had him carry out any missions in the States. They were now cruising down the Long Island Expressway when the sun began to set. Overhead and unbeknownst to Arianna and her passenger; Tony Stark's jet whizzed by. It was another two and a half hours to reach the tip of Long Island, they made good timing from bypassing any traffic in the HOV lane up until the Expressway ended in the center of Suffolk County. They drove to the south shore tip of the island, Montauk by means of I-27. It was complete nightfall by the time they arrived, and from the unlit road inside Camp Hero, Arianna pulled onto a dirt path nearly overgrown with brush. A few hundred feet down this path, and after passing a huge satellite dish, she stopped the car, but left the lights on to expose a large cement structure partially hidden in a wooded area.

They grabbed a few bags from the SUV, and the Soldier followed her around the structure. Sticking up from the ground it looked like a manhole cover was set a top a slab of cement. When the Soldier pried it open, it revealed a set of steps leading underground. Arianna ran back to the car to turn the car and the lights off while the Solider headed below ground. Underneath the surface was an outdated lab. The technology didn't look much older than what Zola had his brain stored on. It was a large complex and as they walked through the corridors, Arianna explained that the lights worked from energy harnessed from the Atlantic not too far away, and so the power was never shut off when the United States abandoned the structure after the Cold War.

"This is the Montauk Project. It was part of the military base that was located here since the American's Revolutionary War. They used it again in World War II to make sure German U-Boats weren't hanging around off the coast to invade Long Island. The satellite was added during the Cold War to be used in conjunction with the Air Force. They abandoned it in 1981… but it wasn't completely deserted. The Montauk Project was first commissioned by the U.S. Government, but Hydra caught wind and implanted their own to convert it for them and build upon the work the Americans started on. They carried out experiments in psychological warfare. Do you remember this place?" Arianna said while walking them through the facility. Did he remember the place?

Of course not, he was never in the United States before last week.

But it felt like his steps were retracing ones he had taken before….

Arianna opened a heavy door to a large, rotund room. The set-up inside the room was very familiar. A predecessor to the chair Hydra used to wipe clean his memory. And a few feet back from it, a cryogenic chamber. There was also a large oak table with chairs sitting dustily in the middle of the room. Papers still scattered on top. Arianna tidied the papers up neatly and set down their own belongings. The Soldier looked at the chair, and began to move toward it as was his instinct.

"Oh no, not today, you're not getting that. There's no reason to wipe your memory again, especially if you want it back, you will however be going for a little nap when that thing gets cold enough," she said, making a nod to the giant freezer.

He was confused. He never had an after-thought about the chair. He had been in it so many times the pain had become a reward to him. And afterwards he got to have the most soundless and replenishing sleep, his own miniature hibernation. He was thrown back by this.

"We are here, because you've been here before. In the 1980's, Hydra had just landed control of you, swiping you from the Soviets. They tested you out in Europe and Asia before bringing you here. You landed in Chicago. You never completed your mission there,  
you disappeared for six months. Hydra found you again, wandering the streets of New York. When they found you, they brought you here. You were irate and untamed, and they couldn't get any information on what you had been doing in those months," she explained.

"How do you know all this about me?" he replied, her hold on him was loosening.

"As I've been telling you my story runs concurrently with yours through the last 50 years. Except, while you got to take little naps in between the years I've been awake the whole time. I escaped Hydra's prison camp when Captain America came to rescue you, yes you. I couldn't return home so instead I traveled to Germany where the Americans were releasing the death camps. I figured I could just get some help from them. Lucky for me I was picked up by the Russians. I made the mistake of telling them about the experiments. At that point they didn't have you. Sometime later they picked you up and I confirmed what you were. Ever since the day I told them about those experiments they had been planning what to do if they got their hands on you. I've always been in your past. I sold you out to Hydra thinking I could get revenge on them. I didn't know it at the time but I condemned you," Arianna put her hands up to her forehead, placing her fingers on her temples. She felt embarrassed.

"You never knew me before," he replied. His thoughts were fixated on memories he couldn't remember. That's what he cared about. They were so strange to him, to know he lived a life without being used as an object, but motivated by humanity. Once upon a time he had been motivated by morality, friendship, camaraderie, words he only knew by name and not what they felt like.

"No, I did not," she said.

Arianna stood up to pace around the room. She wondered if piling on more things he couldn't remember would help or hurt her cause. She wondered if he would catch on to her manipulation.

"I want to remember," he said, his voice sounded…frail. He looked up at her from where he was seated. There were those eyes again, so much pain and misunderstanding behind them. It reminded her that he was still human, and she was too.

"In the 1980's, when you briefly escaped, you came to New York, where your real life had taken place. You came back to find that life, but you couldn't grasp the concept of why. You wanted to find your home and your best friend because you knew that at one point you had both and they were there, but it was under a surface you couldn't reach. The only thing you found in New York was me, not the ghost of your friend Steve Rogers," Arianna said.

"He is my mission," he was looking away again. His face was strewn up with concentration and worry.

Captain America, Steve Rogers – whoever he was – the Soldier had a directive to kill, but in his mind something held him back. It was the force between relentlessly attacking him yet saving him from drowning. He was wrestling with the ideas of killing and keeping him.

"You need to be frozen again, otherwise you won't be able to be handled," Arianna said, she was leaning against the door of the freezer, looking in through the small glass window.

The Soldier listened without hesitation. When the Soldier was situated inside, safely nestled until they would need to move out again, Arianna reached into one of her bags and pulled out a cell phone.

She may have tossed out her Hydra-issued ones but they never would have guessed about this one. Then, she made the call she had been dreading.


	11. Chapter 11

"So, this is interesting, Fury, Tony's not in New York anymore. He's with the Captain," Hill said, returning from taking a phone call.

"And where's the Captain going?" Fury asked.

"Russia, sir," Hill responded.

"Take a team back to the States, Hill, and ready a jet for me to take to Russia," Fury commanded.

Even though Fury wasn't Director anymore, and S.H.I.E.L.D. ceased to exist as it formerly did, Fury was still a leader and there were still a good plenty of people fiercely loyal to his cause.

Clint and Natasha were on their way to check on a couple of important S.H.I.E.L.D. buildings that housed prisoners and detainees. It was Clint's idea and Natasha liked the idea of being back on a mission. If these prisons didn't hold out through the scourge it could mean every enemy S.H.I.E.L.D. had faced, but not eliminated, would be back in the world, and probably back with a vendetta. Hydra would have no problem with recruitments to their cause. As they flew en route to a S.H.I.E.L.D. detention center located in Cambodia, Clint received a message from his informant, asking for help back in the States.

"If we go it could be a trap, actually it probably is a trap," Natasha said. She was seated in the co-pilot chair, her boots were off and her knees were tucked into her chest. Her arms hugged her legs over her shins and she nestled her head in between her knees. It was a very different form to see Natasha in. There was no guard up.

"Would someone want to knock me off a list send me The Winter Soldier files?" Clint said in rebuttal.

"It's a tactic someone very smart could use, exactly the kind of tactic Hydra used, befriend and then disassemble from the inside," Natasha quipped back. She had seen S.H.I.E.L.D. crumble right before her eyes and she felt, even through the dissolution that she had to protect it. S.H.I.E.L.D. stood for something, and not just Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.


	12. Chapter 12

Stark's jet landed on the outskirts of a small Russian village called Ryl'sk with barely a sound louder than a whisper. It was decently far from Moscow, where Stark had originally planned to land close to, but this location attracted the former Iron Man because of the spike in radio waves being emitted. A town this small would not need this many encrypted radio lines.

It was morning and there was dew on the ground when Steve looked outside. His mind for a moment was confused by the time difference, but having served in the military and criss-crossed the world continuously with S.H.I.E.L.D. he had learned to just roll with it. Sleeping for Steve didn't do much.

Jarvis woke up Sam, who had fallen asleep a few minutes prior by opening a window shade and letting the sunlight in. Steve wondered how easy it would be to fall asleep, especially after the bombshell of information Tony had just laid on them. It made Steve very uneasy to know what may be out there due to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s negligence.

"Have you ever heard of Chernobyl?" Tony started out, focusing on Steve who had still been an icicle when it happened over twenty years ago. Sam nodded, remembering it as a kid.

"Enlighten me, it sounds familiar" Steve said to press Tony on.

"Twenty years ago, a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had a melt-down, just a few hundred miles from where we are. The area is still highly radioactive within something like a 22 mile radius. S.H.I.E.L.D. at the time, had a facility not too far from ground zero, and had to abandon it. The facility happened to house a gratuitous those good old Hydra weapons you encountered back in your World War II days. So, guess what happened to them?" Tony began; he was down a glass of whiskey already.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't even try to move the arsenal? They just left them there?" enragement grew in Steve's voice; he had seen those weapons desecrate plenty of good men. S.H.I.E.L.D. kept all they found, and for what reason? To be stored up in a locker and then abandoned?

"Who was in charge of that?" Sam asked.

"Our very good friend, Alexander Pierce, so as you can see this wasn't just a coincidence, this was a Hydra plan all along to have those weapons," Tony responded.

Something clicked in Steve's head, he had just read about Chernobyl, but where? Then he remembered The Winter Soldier files Natasha had given him.

"Hang on a second," Steve got up to rummage through his bag to find the folder. He splayed out the contents on an end table and shuffled through them until he found a small one-line piece of information.

"26 April, 1986. The Winter Soldier completed Chernobyl disaster, first mission successful since regaining Soldier, new asset acquired," Steve read out loud.

"I thought this sentence was strange because of the part where it says 'regaining Soldier,' he hadn't been on a mission since one in Chicago where the results were listed as not available. These are Hydra files. I think he was still with the Soviets at this point though," Steve said.

"Sounds like the KGB and Hydra were almost one in the same," Sam stated.

"Or, my hunch is rather that Hydra pulled a fast one on the KGB as well. The KGB was around until 1991, and this is where Natasha comes into our story," Tony piped up.

Steve's face fell flat. He trusted Natasha and she had even asked him if he was sure of himself to do that.

"Our little Widow was just a kid in 1991, so I don't think she was on kill missions for them then, but according to the files she leaked when she leaked S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra's, the KGB didn't fully collapse in 1991. They merely ceased to exist as we knew them, similar to what our great little organization has succumbed to in the past few days," Tony said.

"Jarvis I would like you to pull up Natasha's file on what she was up to in 1986, I believe she was just a terrible two-year-old at this point," he continued.

"From the S.H.I.E.L.D. file: Born Natalia Alianovna Romanova on November 22, 1984 in Volgograd, Natalia and her mother soon moved to Pripyat, Ukraine and remained there until the Chernobyl disaster where she was orphaned in the aftermath. Natalia was discovered wandering the streets and picked up by an unknown-." Jarvis started.

"Get to the point, Jarvis-," Tony barked at his AI.

"Natalia was recruited to the KGB and worked at the hands of the Soviets even after the KGB collapse in 1991. From the Hydra files shortly after the KGB fell: Successful sleeper cell in KGB, uprooted the organization internally, assets acquired, subdued, re-trained, and are a successful venture." Jarvis said.

The statement was so vague. Steve wasn't quite sure he was making sense of it.

"Natasha worked for Hydra?" Sam came to the conclusion quicker.

"It sounds like it, she was picked up by the KGB at a young age, completely malleable, she could have been feeding information to Hydra about the KGB without even being aware of it," Stark said.

A snippet from the conversation Steve and Natasha had when they traveled up to the base gnawed at his conscious in the back of his mind.

_"I don't know, the truth is a matter of circumstances. It's not all things to all people all the time, and neither am I." _

He began to wonder if Natasha had been helping Hydra plan to unravel S.H.I.E.L.D.

"But here's the other thing, her files run cold and contradicting if you compare dates from both ends. Only when she began taking out political figures as a teen is when she got on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar, so those files can pretty much be vouched for. Our little espionage artist could have been set up to spy on us from the beginning, and we don't have anything concrete on that now," Tony said.

"So where is she?" Sam asked.

Tony looked Sam square in the face.

"I'm not sure, but I'm afraid we're bound to run into her sometime soon and we may not like what she does."


	13. Chapter 13

Arianna waited after the call. No response. It was a long shot in the dark but what was she to do. This bunker was the end of what she could manage and she needed help. It was quiet in the facility other than the electrical hum of the lights. She was used to being alone, used to roughing it and staying under the radar. After the 1990's she fazed herself out of Hydra, staying in contact for contractual jobs. It allowed her to slip unnoticed by government, and the fewer questions that were asked were better for her survival.

For some time she sat watching the cell phone. Waiting for the response to come, and when the wait began to try her patience, she paced the room, her eyes locked in a sideways glance to the cell phone on the table. She thought more time than an hour had gone by, but when you wait for something, every second stretches longer. She stopped pacing in front of the freezer where James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes hibernated. The look on his face was complacent, except for long lines of worry and confusion etched into his forehead. He had a thousand-yard stare that only the most damaged soldiers carried.

She could just leave him here forever and put an end to his misery. But she made a promise to herself, a long time ago after selling him out that she would get him his freedom. It was her only way of true freedom too. As she looked upon the Soldiers face, she thought about how far he had already come into his journey for freedom. Most Soldiers wore a helmet for protection of the head and mind, like Captain America did. The Winter Soldier had worn one to cover his mouth, silence him and keep him submissive. And now that he didn't have that mask, that muzzle, anymore, it was like he was already getting to chose who he wanted to be. He was a duality of a man, stuck between one who had been more virtuous than anyone she had ever met, and a callous assassin. She gazed at his face for a little longer, and felt herself getting sucked into a time when she knew him in a different way. Arianna was lost in her head for a few moments, hung up on memories that twittered their way into her mind, until, the vibration of the cell phone shook her from the reverie.

She crossed the room in haste to the phone, a text message lit on the screen.

_Rendezvous go. Send location_.

Excellent, Arianna thought.

She responded with the coordinates of Camp Hero.

_ ETA: 0500 hours._

That was just four hours away. Just enough time to prep her business proposition. Arianna moved herself up a floor, situating herself in an office. She was good at selling trust to others, but it required a good amount of meticulous planning and word choice. This was her make it or break it moment, and if it didn't go off without a hitch she could spell disaster for herself and The Winter Soldier.

Fury came up with the same idea to secure S.H.I.E.L.D. armories, detainment facilities, and other sorts of information collection facilities. The problem was, where would he even start to tackle this. For a moment he thought of surrendering the information to the U.S Government, but that was plain silly. S.H.I.E.L.D. would never get off the terrorist organization list if the U.S government knew of the awful things S.H.I.E.L.D. had in its possession. Sure, the leaked files meant that most of it was out there in the world to know, but Fury also knew a lot of it wasn't, and to even sift through the millions of files that had been leaked would take millennia without an artificial intelligence-based database.

Hill kept Fury updated with Stark's info, as she was now in D.C. dealing with inquiries from the Capitol. Stark had informed her of how Banner had already started on destroying weaponry, but that was Hydra weaponry from WWII, it wasn't the most dangerous thing out there. It was definitely technology that could be harvested and re-purposed. Fury would oversee S.H.I.E.L.D. teams securing the weapons and secrets, but personally, he was after something else. Fury wanted to know just how Hydra grew so big, so unnoticed, and loyal to their cause.

What Steve said about Arnim Zola made sense, and that was an idiotic thing for S.H.I.E.L.D. to have done, but Zola couldn't have done it alone single-handily turning agents against their cause. Who would have the power to implant such a small idea and let it consume? He began his search with finding out everyone Zola was acquainted with during his S.H.I.E.L.D. tenure.

Simply put, Fury was infuriated. His whole life had been dedicated to S.H.I.E.L.D., and he was responsible for recruiting many more agents, many who he currently didn't know if they had turned tides. He thought of Coulson and the Tahiti project and how he didn't let a dead man stay dead. This would be the same route he would take for S.H.I.E.L.D. Someone really wanted the organization to spell out shield for a reason. Probably from the mind of Peggy Carter, who spoke of her admiration for Captain America's shield and its symbol of protection and immunity to the world. Fury wasn't going to let his S.H.I.E.L.D. be tarnished.


	14. Chapter 14

Steve and Sam suited up and Tony stayed behind to offer back up surveillance. Tony had got readings in the area of an underground structure, and cross-analyzing it with local building plans held no record of it. It was pinpointed as the place to start their search.

Steve was donning his original suit, the one he stole from the Smithsonian exhibit. It was an advanced suit in the 1940's, but not as far advanced to get all the bloodstains out. Sam could barely stomach looking at Steve with the faded and reddish-brown colored stains; the one on the abdomen area was enough to bring black flashbacks of his tours overseas. With Sam on good terms with Tony, he hinted that Captain America should have a clean suit, because something about a tarnished American-flag styled ensemble didn't sit well with him. Tony said he'd call in a few favors if Steve would stop acting so… so… pretentious about the whole thing.

When Steve and Sam reached the end of the meadow they were in Tony was scanning the immediate area for ground anomalies that would give out the location of an underground depression. As Steve searched the brush, Sam flew high, not only acclimating himself to the new handles of the Falcon suit but to be on the watch-out. But they were walking (and flying) blindly into a trap.

Before Tony could alert them, the echoes of a large artillery weapon sounded. It was close enough to be in the vicinity of their search area, but not close enough to locate and dismantle before it did some real damage. As Steve turned, the shell rocketed forward emitting a stream of smoke from behind it. He lifted his shield up and tucked his whole body behind it, situating his feet wide to receive the forceful impact. Upon collision, a small explosion ignited the air, sending Steve sliding a few feet back in the grass. He could hear another explosion rip above him and he thought about Sam being blown from the sky.

Sam was fine though, Steve heard him over the communicator. Tony mockingly scolded him on damaging the Falcon wings.

"They're not even singed!" Sam said in a half-laugh kind of way somewhere overhead.

"In all seriousness, fall back until we can isolate where this fire is coming from," Tony added, nonchalantly.

But Steve paid no attention, as more of the large explosive shells were launched in their direction, he ran toward the smoke trails. Bases always kept these kinds of heavy artillery close by, so if he found them, he would also find the base.

"Hey Cap, now would be a good time to turn around," Tony's voice came over.

"Sorry, Stark. We wouldn't be being shot at right now if whoever shooting at us didn't want us to find out something," Steve said, slightly breathless as he was running in full sprint.

"I'll scout out above you," Sam interjected.

"You two aren't going to make this easy for me," Tony sighed.

Steve was getting closer and closer until the missiles stopped coming. The air was now thick with smoke and he could not pick out an individual smoke trail. He stopped and listened. There could be ground infantry somewhere nearby ready to prey on his disorientation.

"You've got people walking towards you, Cap," Sam said from his aerial view.

"Walking?" Steve replied.

"Yeah walking," he confirmed.

Steve kept his guard up and slowly continued on the direction he had been following. As the smoke cleared he could make out the silhouettes of a handful of people.

"Tony can you get an estimate on how many people there are?" he asked.

"I get about six, but Steve, I'm getting some crazy readings from them, there's something very abnormal about them," he responded.

Steve was used to abnormal at this point.

"Good morning, Captain America! Hope our little missile display gave you a good work out," a voice called out across the way, in accented English.

"Who are you?" Steve barked back, he was still unable to make out the faces.

"My name is Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, and I am happy you could join us this morning," came a reply.

_Germans?_ Steve thought.

But they were in Russia,_ why would Germans be here_.

"What do you want?" Steve called; he could just begin to make out details. Dark grey military suits, several pendants glinting as the light touched it.

"Clearly, I should be asking you, as you sought us out," Strucker said, they were still walking forward.

Sam landed next to Steve.

"We came to look for a friend, we thought she might be here," Sam interjected.

Now Steve could make them out in full form. A tall, man was in the middle, he wore a Hydra pin on his collar and an armband with the same insignia. To his left was tall, but skinny man with glasses and a lab coat. Flanking both of their sides' were two soldiers handling large weaponry with a recognizable blue glow to them. Behind all of them were two figures, both swathed in light colored clothing, still blending in with the clearing smoke. The larger of the two figures appeared constantly in motion. Steve took a few steps closer to shrink the gap. Sam stayed back in apprehension.

"Tony, can you pull up info on these guys," Steve was now whispering, hoping to be out of earshot of the group that was confronting him.

"I am not sure if you have any friends here, Captain. But I would like to introduce you to two of mine, my miracles. Wanda, Pietro come say hello to our little stars and stripes hero," Strucker said.

The man in the middle, now known as Strucker, stepped aside to allow the two figures trailing behind to come in front. Steve was taken aback by their appearance. They looked no older than their early twenties. The larger, fidgeting figure, which Steve safely assumed was Pietro, stared him straight in the eyes despite his uncontrollable shaking. The look he gave to Steve was menacing. The girl, on the other hand, was almost the exact opposite; she carried the expression as someone with their head stuck in the clouds. She looked, almost in a sense, angelic, her eyes looking beyond what was in front of her.

"Now, don't be rude, Herr Captain! Step up and say hello," Strucker called from the sidelines.

It seemed to work as some kind of cue for the siblings standing in front of Steve. Without a second passing by, the girl snapped her head straight-forward, her hair rising from the sides of her face , defying gravity. The heels of her feet pulsed off the ground and her eyes suddenly became jaded over. Before being able to raise his shield, Steve was tackled to the ground by the guy. He hadn't even had a chance to react to his movement. As Steve clamored back up to his feet he was struck by a heavy fist. And another one.

"You should get out of there Steve!" Tony's voice distantly yelling in his earpiece.

Sam was back in the air by now and rushed to pick Steve off the ground, but as he struggled to climb altitude carrying Steve by his underarms, he realized there was a force keeping them paused in mid-air.

"Drop me, Sam, drop me now!" Steve called. Sam obeyed, and Steve plummeted to the ground with such an unnatural force.

Now on all fours, winded from the fall, Steve looked up to see the girl approaching, slowly. Her feet barely touched the ground and her hands were at her stomach, moving as if she was molding an imaginable ball of clay.

_"_Wanda, you know what to do to Herr _Rogers!" _Strucker called out exuberantly.


	15. Chapter 15

Natasha had fallen asleep. That's the thing about spies, they could for days without a minute of sleep, but when they are somewhere they feel safe, they are out in two seconds, and very rarely do they wake up from nightmares, as was the case when they were alone.

Clint had defied her request not to meet up with the informant. He had been a part of the community of people who refused to believe in The Winter Soldier. And now there was solid proof. Natasha's bullet story checked out, this guy really shot her.

Even though he was an excellent pilot, Clint couldn't help but land the plan with a thud that startled Natasha. Her eyes flung open and he watched as her body tensed, ready to fight her way out of a bad situation. When she realized that wasn't the case, that she was still in the company of her best friend, she relaxed and stretched out.

"Good morning, Nat," Clint said, he flipped a few switches on the plane and the engine shut off.

"Moring…? It's not morning in Cambodia," Natasha responded, she was half-awake but had her full wits about her.

"Well, we're not in Cambodia," Clint responded, he was walking out o the cockpit.

"What? Oh no Clint, what did you do?" Natasha was on her feet following him out.

Clint headed to his quarters to gather his armor and his weapon of choice.

"Gear up, Nat," Clint said.

But Natasha was mad. She cornered Clint when he tried to exit the room by standing against the doorframe and extending an arm to block the rest of the space. Clint looked at her with irritation.

"This is a trap, Clint," her voice was stern and gritty.

"Natasha, we want answers, well here they are. I am going to get them. You can stay in here and sulk all you want about it, but this is where I need to be, because I need to know…" Clint said.

"And when did you become so vested in this Winter Soldier business? It's not like you were there in D.C. up against the guy," Natasha retorted, she was still in his way.

"Now that I know it's not just some ghost tale to chase after, I…I want to help Steve out. He really was the guy who shot you, Nat."

Natasha was still mad but she couldn't let Clint go through this alone. She turned from the archway and let Clint pass, following him out so she could gear up.

"Where are we?" Natasha asked, as they stepped off the plane several minutes later. Natasha looked around, curiously and cautiously. Her fingers brushed the handle of one of the guns strapped to her thigh. It was just beginning to get light out, and she could smell salt air and hear the distant lapping of waves on a shoreline.

"New York," Clint said, his voice soft, he was scanning the area too.

A few steps off the plane, both of them stared at a figure directly in front of them, standing in front of a large stone door. There was a black SUV parked nearby. Natasha took a deep breath and nudged Clint forward. As they walked up to the figure, a woman, Natasha analyzed her with every form of training she had ever been given. The scar above her eye was a telltale sign to her that this woman has been in conflict, and could become volatile at any moment.

"Hello, my name is Arianna, I didn't know there would be two of you coming," the woman said, she was fixated on Natasha.

"I'm Hawkeye and this is-," Clint started.

"The Black Widow. The television helps a lot to know you two are a part of the Avengers, I didn't know I'd had two of them show up at my door this morning," Arianna interjected. She sounded a bit nervous; she was hoping her plan would still pan out.

Natasha picked up on these nerves, like a dog being able to tell when someone is terrified. She would feed off it, just by staring Natasha could bring people to crumble before her.

Arianna really hadn't known what to expect. She had an idea that when she was alerted that someone in Eastern Europe was asking around about The Winter Soldier that it could've been an Avenger. She thought it may have been Tony Stark, but her guess was wrong. It was Clint Barton she sent the files to.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Arianna invited them into the lab; assuring them she was the only one there. She brought them to the office she had prepped earlier.

In the office, Arianna grabbed another chair for Natasha to sit in. Arianna sat down behind the desk. She had dusted off as much as she could of the office and tidied up papers and made the office look used, rather than abandoned for over twenty years.

At least she tried to. Clint was concerned on talking business, but Natasha was busy analyzing the office. It was easy to tell how outdated and antiquated it was, but the red flag to Natasha was that it was freshly dusted. And a bad job at that, dust still clung to the rims of paperweights and files. She could tell they hadn't been dusted underneath, a quick job to just give the appearance of use. They had only walked through two hallways upon entering the building, and everything felt stuck in time. Natasha correctly guessed that this place had been abandoned a long time ago and this woman with the strange scar had just occupied it fairly recent. She was going to need a look around the facility to get a better idea of who this woman was and what really was her motive.

"Excuse me, Arianna, I didn't have time to use the bathroom before getting off our ride, is there one here I could use?" Natasha asked with a smile on her face. It was meant to confuse her all the while remaining polite so Clint wouldn't catch on.

Arianna had just been explaining that she was neither S.H.I.E.L.D. nor Hydra and that she only did what Hydra asked so she wasn't killed. It was a half-truth. When Natasha interrupted for bathroom permission, Arianna panicked. She could tell Natasha was scrutinizing her every move from the moment she came off the plane, but to refuse her a bathroom break would be a dead giveaway that she was hiding something. Arianna showed Natasha where the bathroom was and made sure she entered the room.

Natasha had no plans to stay in the bathroom, but lingered for a moment until she knew Arianna would turn away. She slipped out of the bathroom holding a gun up to her chest and silently set her path down the hallway, until she reached a portion where the lights were off. She walked down the dark hallway until a bend and came across a lit staircase.

Intrigued she went down a floor and came across another long hallway, but there was a very large lit room at the end and Natasha was sure there had to be more people down here.

Natasha made it into the room, and was shocked by what she saw. There was a large freezer in the center, and a chair with some electrical contraption connected to it in a corner of the room.

She walked up to the door of the freezer and felt herself tense up in disbelief.

_"Fuck,"_ she said out loud.

The sleeping face of The Winter Soldier was directly in front of her.

She quickly turned around and fled. She left Clint alone with this madwoman, who knows what was happening there.

Natasha burst into the room, gun drawn and fixed at Arianna.

"You fucking bitch, don't you dare move!" Natasha screamed.


	16. Chapter 16

Steve could not remember a time he couldn't get a punch in during a fight. He could barely maintain standing on two feet for more than half a minute. Between the girl slamming his body against the ground only to be tackled as he stood up by her brother, Steve couldn't find a weak spot in the duo.

Sam had tried shooting at the pair, but his bullets were blocked, and he was down for the count after being catapulted into a tree. He was alive but ribs were definitely broken. Tony had been silent on the line for a while, which was odd for the man who seemingly never shut up. Perhaps Strucker had sent a team to the plane to capture or kill Tony.

Steve wasn't sure if Tony could stand a chance without being Iron Man anymore. In order to survive, Steve thought, he needed to worry about himself. As Steve took punch after punch, and slam after slam, he began to work out a pattern. While the two were very powerful, their fighting style was underdeveloped. They kept repeating the same moves over and over, and while being effective on beating Steve, he could take them with a surprise. After Wanda would suspend Steve in the air and throw him to the ground, Pietro would run by and throw a punch on his left side as he began to get up off the ground, and always his left side. Steve had to pretend he was down for the count, thereby tricking Pietro to run by without knocking him out again.

Once Steve accomplished this, he tossed his shield to ricochet off a nearby tree and slam into Wanda before returning back to Steve. Enraged, Pietro wheeled back around to counter-attack Steve. And while being much faster than Steve, his fighting was unrefined; there were no calculations behind his attack. Pietro threw fists just to throw them. Steve just had to withstand enough until he found an opening in the barrage to slam his shield into the man's gut.

With all the energy that Pietro's super speed brought him, he rebounded heavily and fell on to his back. As he was just about to celebrate this accomplishment, Steve was caught off guard by Wanda, who had expelled some kind of ball of energy in his direction. He was able to tumble out of the way, but felt the shock-wave pass by.

"Stark if you're there, tell me what the heck is going on with these two," Steve called out.

Pietro charged at Steve again, but Steve used a nearby tree to flip himself up and around to attack him from the back. He could deal with one at a time, but the two of them he just couldn't handle. As he both dodged and dealt punches, he was struck from the back from one of Wanda's energy balls, or whatever they were. The force was so powerful it dropped Steve to his knees. He writhed in pain as the shock sent an electrical current pulse through his body.

Pietro kneed him in the face hard, and Steve was certain this would be lights out for him. Then, never missing a beat for the theatrical side, Steve heard loud, heavy, and thrashing metal music cut through the air.

Tony Stark had arrived, and Steve had never been so glad to see the man in the red and gold iron suit. Still crippled with pain, Steve couldn't speak as he tried to command his body to evade hits.

"So I may have been lying too, Cap," Stark said.

Stark immediately went to take on Wanda. Jarvis was running scans on her.

"It appears she is harnessing the electrons out of thin air and creating an electrical matter, sir," Jarvis said.

"Whatever, Jarvis, I just need to know how to take her down," It was a good thing Jarvis understood his sarcasm.

Steve recovered in the meantime and focused on Pietro.

"I don't think we're going to defeat them today, Cap, I say we cut them down and scram," Stark said.

Steve hated to agree on this. He didn't like walking away from fights, but this wasn't what they came for. Once Steve and Tony got the two under control, Tony grabbed Sam, and they headed back to the plane and immediately took off.

"Now what?" Sam groaned watching the landscape shrink out of sight.


End file.
